Lester stood unsteadily.
“I can’t deal with this,” he said. “I just … can’t.”
He turned and wandered into the dining room. Riley could see that the two couples there hurried to comfort him.
“Tiffany, you should be ashamed of yourself,” Eunice said.
The girl’s eyes were brimming with tears.
“But I just want to know the truth, Mom. Lois didn’t kill herself. She couldn’t have done that. I know it.”
Eunice looked at Riley.
“I’m sorry you got caught in the middle of this,” she said. “Tiffany’s having trouble accepting the truth.”
“It’s you and Dad who can’t deal with the truth,” Tiffany said.
“Hush,” her mother said.
Eunice handed her daughter a handkerchief.
“Tiffany, there were things you didn’t know about Lois,” she said slowly and cautiously. “She was more unhappy than she probably told you. She loved college, but it wasn’t easy for her. Keeping her grades up for her scholarships was a lot of pressure, and it was also hard for her to be away from home. She was starting to take antidepressants and was getting counseling at Byars. Your father and I thought she was getting along better, but we were wrong.”
Tiffany was trying to bring her sobs under control, but she still seemed very angry.
“That school is an awful place,” she said. “I’d never go there.”
“It’s not awful,” Eunice said. “It’s a very good school. It’s demanding, that’s all.”
“I’ll bet those other girls didn’t think it was such a good school,” Tiffany said.
April had been listening to her friend with great concern.
“What other girls?” she asked.
“Deanna and Cory,” Tiffany said. “They died too.”
Eunice shook her head sadly and said to Riley, “Two other girls committed suicide at Byars last semester. It’s been a terrible year there.”
Tiffany stared at her mother.
“They weren’t suicides,” she said. “Lois didn’t think so. She thought something was wrong at that place. She didn’t know what it was, but she told me it was something really bad.”
“Tiffany, they were suicides,” Eunice said wearily. “Everybody says so. Things like this happen.”
Tiffany stood up, shaking with rage and frustration.
“Lois’s death didn’t ‘just happen,’” she said.
Eunice said, “When you get older, you’ll understand that life can be harder than you realize. Now sit back down, please.”
Tiffany sat down in sullen silence. Eunice gazed off into space. Riley felt terribly uncomfortable.
“We really didn’t come here to disturb you in any way,” Riley told Eunice. “I apologize for the intrusion. Maybe it’s best if we leave.”
Eunice silently nodded. Riley and April showed themselves out.
“We should have stayed,” April said sullenly as soon as they were outside. “We should have asked more questions.”
“No, we were just upsetting them,” Riley said. “It was a terrible mistake.”
Suddenly, April trotted away from her.
“Where are you going?” Riley asked with alarm.
April headed straight for the side door to the garage. There was a strip of police tape across the doorframe.
“April, stay away from there!” Riley said.
April ignored both the tape and her mother and turned the doorknob. The door was unlocked and swung open. April ducked under the tape and into the garage. Riley hurried in after her, intending to scold her. Instead, her own curiosity got the best of her, and she peered around the garage.
There weren’t any cars inside, which made the three-car space look eerily cavernous. Dim light shone in through several windows.
April pointed toward a corner.
“Tiffany told me that Lois was found over there,” April said.
Sure enough, the spot was marked by strips of masking tape on the floor.
There were broad roof beams under the roof, and a stepladder leaning against the wall.
“Come on,” Riley said. “We shouldn’t be in here.”
She led her daughter out and pulled the door shut. As she and April walked toward the car, Riley visualized the scene. It was easy to imagine how the girl could have climbed up on that ladder and hanged herself.
Or was that really what happened? she wondered.
She had no reason to think otherwise.
Even so, she was beginning to feel a faint tingle of doubt.
*
A short while later at home, Riley called the district medical examiner, Danica Selves. She had been friends with Danica for years. When Riley asked her about the case of Lois Pennington’s death, Danica sounded surprised.
“Why are you so curious?” Danica asked. “Is the FBI taking an interest in this?”
“No, it’s just something personal.”
“Personal?”
Riley hesitated, then said, “My daughter is good friends with Lois’s sister, and she also knew Lois a little. Both she and Lois’s sister are having trouble believing that she committed suicide.”
“I see,” Danica said. “Well, the police found no signs of a struggle. And I conducted the tests and the autopsy myself. According to blood results, she’d taken a heavy dose of alprazolam some time before she died. My guess is she just wanted to be as out of it as she possibly could. By the time she hanged herself, she probably just didn’t care about what she was doing. It would have been a lot easier to do that way.”
“So it’s really an open-and-shut case,” Riley said.
“It sure looks that way to me,” Danica said.
Riley thanked her and ended the call. At that moment, April came downstairs with a calculator and a piece of paper.
“Mom, I think I’ve proved it!” she said excitedly. “It couldn’t have been anything but murder!”
April sat down beside Riley and showed her some numbers that she’d written down.
“I did a little research online,” she said. “I found out that about seven point five college students commit suicide out of one hundred thousand. That’s point zero zero seven five percent. But there are only about seven hundred students at Byars, and three of them are supposed to have killed themselves in the last few months. That’s about point four three percent—which is fifty-seven times the average! It’s just impossible!”
Riley’s heart sank. She appreciated that April was putting so much thought into this. It seemed very mature of her.
“April, I’m sure your math is just fine, but …”
“But what?”
Riley shook her head. “It doesn’t prove anything at all.”
April’s eyes widened with disbelief.
“What do you mean, it doesn’t prove anything?”
“In statistics, there are things called outliers. They’re exceptions to the rules, they go against the averages. It’s like the last case I worked on—the poisoner, remember? Most serial killers are men, but that was a woman. And most killers like to watch their victims die, but she just didn’t care. It’s the same thing here. It’s no surprise that there are some colleges where more students commit suicide than the average.”
April stared at her and said nothing.
“April, I just talked to the medical examiner who did the autopsy. She’s sure that Lois’s death was a suicide. And she knows her job. She’s an expert. We have to trust her judgment.”
April’s face was tight with anger.
“I don’t see why you can’t trust my judgment just this once.”
Then she stormed away and went upstairs.
At least she’s sure she knows what happened, she thought with a groan.
That was more than Riley could say for herself.
Her instincts still told her nothing at all.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was happening all over again.
The monster named Peterson held April captive somewhere just ahead.
Riley struggled and searched through the dark. Each step seemed slow and cumbersome, but she knew she had to hurry.
With her shotgun slung over her shoulder, Riley stumbled in the dark down a sharp, muddy slope toward a river. Suddenly she saw them. Peterson was standing ankle-deep in the water. Just a few feet from him, April was half submerged in the water, bound by her hands and feet.
Riley reached for her shotgun, but Peterson raised a pistol and pointed it directly at April.
“Don’t even think about it,” Peterson yelled. “One move and it’s over.”